About City Lab Coventry

Coventry University, in partnership with its local authority, Coventry City Council, applied to and were successful in becoming a member of the 5th wave of Living Labs in July 2010. The result of this was City Lab Coventry (CLC).

CLC is a joint venture between Coventry University and Coventry City Council, set up to address the Grand Challenges within the Smart City Context. The University and the City Council own 90% of the land within Coventry City Centre and are offering it for use as a real-life experimentation environment where users and producers can co-create and test innovations.

CLC includes:

Access to citizens, vehicles, buildings, roads and IT infrastructure within the city;

A serious games studio/app lab, staffed by 30 developers providing specialist support in the creation of 3D immersive simulations and serious games, from prototype development through to full commercialisation;

Business support, working with SMEs, start-up businesses and corporate organisations;

Since its inception, CLC has developed a strong brand and conduit for project partnering in European projects in the area of Transport and Buildings. Although this has naturally become its focus, it does not exclude projects and opportunities in the wider discipline areas. As such, CLC is expanding rapidly to support social mobility and working with neighbourhoods in Coventry to support education development for underrepresented groups of citizens.

Why City Lab Coventry?

Coventry’s decision to become a Living Lab and a member of the European Network of Living Labs was driven by its ambition to be active in the Smart Cities arena and to strengthen its relationship with the local authority in this area. There was also an aspiration to build and strengthen links in Europe with a view to partnering in European Funding proposals.

Results

The CLC has allowed multiple relationships to be developed through a seat on the ENoLL Council and access to its wide membership base. Some examples of success are below:

The brand has helped Coventry to a achieve success in a number of European funded proposals;

It has created opportunity for Coventry University to engage with the World Bank and to be involved in the development of the World Bank book on Citizen Engagement in ICT for Smart Agile Service Delivery;

It has provided the opportunity to network with likemindedorganisations;

It has allowed for significant profile raising in Europe through articles in Le Monde newspaper; Le Prise radio station and Étages magazines.